Marcel de Jong Says: October 28th, 2010 at 5:57 am in an edition of On the Media a few weeks back, someone was proposing stronger copyright laws for fashion. Because apparently in France they have more protection on fashion and why shouldn’t America have similar protections against copying.Because young fashion designers can’t exactly protect themselves from that type of copying.

BOB GARFIELD: Now, there’s another way to attack the premise of the legislation that you’re supporting, that the ecosystem for fashion is doing actually very nicely and that to the extent that people knock off Paris runway designs very, very quickly, that the trends move more quickly and, therefore, constantly churning everybody’s closet, so that they are constantly in need of new fashions, that while individual designers may be harmed in the short run, the overall ecosystem actually builds their business over time.

SUSAN SCAFIDI: I would disagree with you on that, predictably. From 30,000 feet up, the ecosystem of fashion looks pretty good. The stores are filled with clothes, people are dressing fashionably.

However, if you come down to the level of walking the streets and talking to designers, you’ll see currently a lot of boarded-up boutiques and designers who are really struggling. If those people are driven out of business, in part because of the tough economy and in part because they can’t get return on investment, because the copies get in the stores even more quickly than the original, because of changes wrought by the Internet, then they can’t stay in business, they can’t keep creating over the long run; the ecosystem really breaks down.

In other words, they need laws to prop up old business models. They don’t need to change, the law and the people need to change. And if they can’t get protected, people will simply stop creating new things. *rolls eyes*